BRUSA AND MOUNT OLYMPUS.T. Allom.J. C. Bentley.
This city, sometimes called Boursa, retains, with little corruption, its primitive name, and commemorates the king of Bithynia more celebrated for his illustrious guest than for any achievement of his own. When Hannibal fled from the persecutions of his inveterate enemies, the Romans, he retired into Bithynia, and was received with apparent kindness by Prusias, its king. In return for this hospitality, the accomplished Carthaginian introduced into the more barbarous regions of his host, the arts and sciences of Tyre and Phœnicia, and, in the year 220 before Christ, evinced his taste and judgment by building a city for him on the most beautiful spot that Asia Minor or any other country could afford, the side of Mount Olympus. The effeminate Oriental, however, had not the fortitude to continue the protection he had afforded. Terrified by the threats of the implacable Romans, he was preparing to surrender his persecuted guest to his enemies; but he anticipated his intention by poison, which historians say he carried in his ring for that emergency. He was closely besieged in a house in Brusa, where he swallowed the draught, and he was buried in Libyssa on the Propontis, where a monumental tumulus at this day marks the spot; and the first object a traveller to Brusa sees on landing, is the last resting-place of its illustrious founder. When he enters the city, he is shown a fortress, as the military work of that great master in the art of war, which has stood for 2058 years.
When the crusaders sacked Constantinople, and established their usurped authority in the capital of the Greek empire, they seized on all its dependent cities in Asia Minor, and Brusa formed part of the dynasty of Lascaris. It finally fell into the hands of the Turks when they expanded themselves over the region of Bythinia in 1327, and Othman made it the capital of the young Turkish empire. It continued to enjoy this distinction till the increasing power and ambition of the Osmanli led them into Europe, and theyseized on Constantinople itself. Their seat of empire was then transferred to the great capital of the Greeks, and Brusa remained a provincial town.
It has, however, numerous local attractions, which will always render it a delicious residence to any people; and some of so peculiar a character, as to endear it particularly to a Turk. It is situated on the side of a magnificent mountain, embosomed in lofty forests behind, and having before it, on a gentle declivity, the richest tract in nature. Issuing above the forest scenery, are conspicuous the abrupt and rugged ridges of the mighty mountain, covered with eternal snows, glittering in the sun, and forming a strong contrast with the dark and dense foliage below them. The rays of summer acting for nine sultry months on the frozen surface, send down perennial torrents of pure and limpid water, tumbling over the sides of the mountain in a thousand streams. As they rush along, some of them are conducted through the city, and every street is permeated by a meandering rill of the coolest water, under a heated atmosphere, when the thermometer stands at 96°. From the streets it is led through mosques, bazaars, shops, and private houses, so that almost every edifice in the city has a marble reservoir in the centre, where the living waters leap and gurgle, and beside this the daily repast is spread. After thus imparting freshness and coolness to the city, the currents ripple into the plains below, where they form streams and rivulets, giving to the favoured spot a surprising verdure and fertility, when all beyond is parched and arid. Nor is this the only recommendation that endears this place to the followers of the Prophet. Besides these copious means of cold ablution, there are others which they still more highly prize. In the midst of those frigid solutions of snow, the soil contains hot water, which issues forth in strong currents, at a boiling temperature. These are collected into marble reservoirs of great extent, surmounted with lofty domes, and forming the most noble baths in the world. With such local and permanent attractions for a people whose most indispensable and unremitting duty is washing the body, it is not surprising that this should escape the fate of other deserted capitals. It has been remarked “that Nature seems to have created Brusa for the Turks.” It is, therefore, at this day a more beautiful city than when their sultan abandoned an Asiatic for an European capital. It is still resorted to as the most delightful residence in the Turkish dominions; and many of the sultans, as if to compensate for their abandonment when living, directed that their bodies should repose here in death. It is distinguished by many imperial tombs; and among the rest, that of Orchan, who first penetrated into Europe, but returned here to die.
Brusa stands upon an area of eight miles in circumference, and contains a population of 75,000 people, of whom 11,000 are Jews, and Christians of the Greek and Armenian Church. The most striking objects the town presents are, the mosques and spires, which seem to bear a larger proportion to the size of the place than in any other Mohammedan city: some travellers estimate them at 300. In fact, the whole surface seems swelling into domes, and bristling with tall and taper minarets. The tree whose foliage gives a distinctive character to the vicinity of the town is the mulberry, which is every where planted for the nourishment of silk-worms, the management of which forms the employment of the whole population. The web manufactured from their spinningis highly prized; and Brusa silk is not only famous all over the East, but it is one of those articles which the Asiatic traveller sends home to his friends among his Oriental curiosities.
But the circumstance which gives Brusa its greatest interest, is the mighty mountain on whose side it is built. Olympus, which literally means “all-shining,” was a name by which many mountains were distinguished amongst the ancients, from their conspicuous appearance; but it seems to be applied to this vast and glittering object with peculiar propriety. It stands on a base of seventy miles in circumference, rising by itself from the plain in single and solitary grandeur. Situated in the immediate vicinity of Troy, it is by some supposed the place assigned by Homer,
“Where Jove convened the senate of the skies;”
“Where Jove convened the senate of the skies;”
“Where Jove convened the senate of the skies;”
“Where Jove convened the senate of the skies;”
and poetic fiction adds its interest to the beauty and magnificence of nature.5Ascending from the city, the traveller penetrates an immense forest, with trees of surprising magnitude. This is intersected by ravines of immeasurable depth, and his way leads along the edges of precipices of awful grandeur. He at length emerges on an extensive plain of the richest verdure, intersected with considerable rivers, rushing from the snowy ridges, which now rise before him like a vast wall. These rivers are distinguished for nourishing fish, which are nowhere else to be found in Asia Minor: congenial to the cool streams of this region, they perish and cease to exist when carried down by the currents into the heated climate below. When the venturous traveller climbs through the barrier of snow which lies before him, he issues at length upon a clear and open summit, which the region of snow girdles as with a broad belt. From the point of this cone, 10,500 feet above the level of the plain, he commands a magnificent prospect of Asia and Europe; the Euxine and the Egean, with the strait and seas that unite them, winding like rivers just below him; and feels that “the wide-seeing Jupiter” could not have selected a more judicious point to overlook the affairs of the nether world. A singular object marks this summit,−a circle of twelve large stones, resembling what we call druidical remains; but, from the Oriental region in which they are found, they recall the memory to the usages of a still more remote antiquity, when Moses “builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars,” and Joshua set up “twelve stones” in the midst of Jordan, and ordered twelve more to be carried on men’s shoulders, to be “set up in their lodging-place.”6
The snow of this mountain constitutes a considerable part of the treasures of the Turkish empire, as it does of its comforts and its luxuries. It is the exclusive property of the sultan, who farms it out to tenants, who vend it as more valuable than any produce of the soil. They are bound to supply the seraglio with a certain quantity, and the rest is disposed of to the population of Constantinople. It is sent down from the mountains cut into cuneiform wedges, and packed in felt, and caravans of mules are continuallydescending with such loads. It is brought to a promontory near Moudania, called from thence Booz Bournou, or “the Cape of Ice,” whence it is embarked for the capital, and in such abundance, that the poorest hummal cools his sherbet with it during the hottest season of the year.
The illustration presents all the objects of interest peculiar to the place. In the foreground is a caravan crossing an antique bridge, thrown over one of the snow-dissolved currents which intersect the plain. On one side buffaloes are dragging the ponderous arrhuba; on the other, they are grazing on the low pastures, or cooling themselves in the water. The horse, in Turkey, is never degraded to a servile use: the drudgery of labour is thrown upon the buffalo. It is a singular species of ox, of immense strength, but of a structure so coarse and rude, that it seems “as if Nature’s journeymen had made it, and that not well.” Its ponderous body, its clumsy limbs, its flatted horns, and lustreless eyes, like dull glass, give it a singular appearance of obstinacy and stupidity; but it drags the greatest burdens, through places impassable to other animals, with irresistible force. On the left is the city of Brusa, with its minarets, domes, and regal tombs; and in the background are the rugged ridges of Olympus, with its snows, forests, and precipices.